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The biggest rival to any IT vendor today is...

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Abhigna
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Cameron Haight, Research VP at Gartner was in India recently and we got a chance to understand the new phenomenon called Webscale IT from his window. As he opens the curtains on the interplay of this trend with internal operations and DevOps, he also answers some recurring doubts on the hype factor and the hypothetical case of NoOps.

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How would you introduce Webscale IT for the uninitiated?

It is a term that Gartner has created to show how companies like Amazon etc can deliver IT at amazing speeds and low costs. A lot of applications may still not make their way to public clouds but enterprises can pick a lot from the recipe. Our definition entails web-oriented architectures, infrastructure-as-a-code, data centre efficiency; collaborative design and risk-factor embrace of many cultures. If you want to be like those public cloud guys, then you will have to rethink IT in shared ownership, more so as today any business is a digital business. Interestingly, the biggest challenge in this space is not technological but cultural so if you don't have those blocks, you will be successful in mimicking that recipe.

Even DevOps has entered the conversation-zone in a huge way. Why are these forces not just another hype word?

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Larger clouds are data-centre-centered organizations that measure everything on their dashboards, from PUE to restoration speed metrics. At times, DevOps works well with applications that need innovation, unlike system of records. You really need to develop IT in a two-way street instead of a one-sided lane for rapid provisioning, speed and agility.

Would that mean more conflicts or new metrics?

Developer vs. operations is always a conflict zone but the point is that they both have to align at some values and behavior which is very important than worrying over who will take centre stage.

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But would all this indeed translate into the holy grail of better customer experience? Does it make code-shipping faster and does that matter?

Every business has different requirements and that too changes every two or three years. One needs extreme programming to stay ahead in the game. Fast code is still equal to high quality code but code has to respond today to faster requirements.

What about overlaps?

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That's the way we want to approach data recovery - with no overlaps and responsive to customer demands without forcing them into anything.

Should this bother old economy companies though?

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As to whether start-up or digital-side ideas work well for these companies, may be not always. Some part of their business will have to run on the usual SAPs, Oracles etc some part can simulate Face book too, catering to changing customer needs. Customers have started asking for new infrastructures and Cloud Service Providers are gearing up to new genre of solutions wanted out there.

Can we still call ‘Cloud Recovery' as an oxymoron?

What I have seen is that many customers, especially in mid market space are looking at new levels of competitiveness. New SLAs and maturity has entered recovery market and that paradox is fading steadily.

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What do you make of the shift as perceived towards a NoOps environment?

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It is still a huge debate and somewhere operations is going to stay in some form. It will not magically go away. But it would change, whether in a public cloud or in-house or as a new group. Most cloud companies have good architecture but no concrete four to five year plans.

So Webscale IT is here to stay?

If someone asks me who the biggest competitor to VMware or IBM is, I do not say any rival's name, but I think to myself that the answer is probably - Webscale IT. For organizations to do what Face book or Google has done, they would need to take risks and fight old cultures. Even a small attempt like shifting developers and operations team on the same floor can make these two sides of people bump into each other in a good way, instead of sending nasty mails and playing spirals.